Institut Ramon LLull

After more than ten years of work and including previously undisclosed documentation, the professor and specialist Xavier Pla has written the most complete biography – if not, the definitive biography – of the most influential Catalan prose-writer of the 20th century, an unescapable reference for each and every new generation of writers and readers, and who shaped literary language for modern times and lifted non-fiction (diaries, reporting, journalistic corpus) to the category of high literature: Josep Pla. Here are 1,500 pages dedicated to an author obsessed by posteriority – he commissioned up to four biographies in his lifetime – that seeks to discover the ‘real I’ behind the ‘literary I’ woven over six decades of obstinate dedication to writing and literature of the self. Structured by brief, themed chapters and written with deftness and contagious enthusiasm, the book reveals the mysteries of a life shrouded in fog – friendship, politics, love, espionage, war, family, and literary ambition – all while inviting us to relive some of the most crucial moments in Catalan, Spanish, and European history over the last century.